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YouthShare: News You Can Use

by Katelyn Patterson

SRP Manual Highlight

Chapter 9 of the Teen Manual is called Beyond the Library Walls and has many good suggestions for easy projects for patrons to make and then donate to a good cause.

This immediately reminded me of the wonderful work done at the Bee Cave Public Library and their participation in “# 25000 Tuques”, the global charity project to collect hand-knitted hats for Syrian refugees arriving in Canada. Bee Cave collected hat donations and held a knit-in to see how many hats could be made at the library. Over their participation for the last two years, they have donated 896 hats! Amazing work, Bee Cave!

Starting on page 141 is a section called For the Love of Cats and Dogs. There are four different animal toys to make out of old t-shirts that could be donated to local animal shelters or city animal control. My first suggestion is to contact the shelters to ask what is needed to make sure your donation is welcomed! Next, get your teens to work on these easy projects. Use old SRP theme shirts you have, ask the community to donate shirts, or visit a thrift shop to purchase some for cheap.

I chose to make this dog rope toy from page 142. It was easy and fun to figure out. You could make them as small or large as you want. You could easily get more than one toy out of one adult t-shirt.

The Texas Museum of Science and Technology hosts a weekly STEM program for preschoolers called Wee-Searchers. I thought this name was too cute and had to share it!

Dream Big is a new film for all ages about engineering’s impact in our world and our lives. Your library can sign up to host a screening of the film in your community. See the website for more information. And you can view the trailer here.

Check out the 2016 Cybil Award Winners! The Cybils awards are given each year by bloggers for the year’s best children’s and young adult titles.

Librarian Rebecca McCorkindale recently created some images that are making the rounds on the internet. She is wonderful and encourages everyone to download and use them at their library. Libraries everywhere are making displays using her images. And they are available in languages ranging from American Sign Language to Vietnamese. Even Klingon.